


and the dead be forgotten

by Indices



Series: a life in your shape [2]
Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Gen, Hallucinations, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22567144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indices/pseuds/Indices
Summary: Nadox loses a messiah and gains a small, strange human.Not necessarily in that order.
Series: a life in your shape [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623784
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	1. Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Lament,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. 
> 
> I know there’s no actual “canon,” but this fic counts as an AU even for my headcanon, because I do think it makes more sense narrative-wise that Viekudh was only one of many disciples to learn from Nadox. Also, it’s not very compatible with “Nadox and the Mekhanite,” which is still near and dear to my heart.
> 
> Content warning for referenced suicidal ideation near the beginning, as well as childhood trauma associated with war.

_How unfortunate is the ken of man,_  
_Unable to relate to the cosmos and planes,_  
_Save through the simplest of allegories;_  
_Though perhaps this is a mercy,_  
_For man is a bestial creature,_  
_Far too similar to its Blind Progenitor._

\- _Sone Saarasaati_ , “The Doom-Song of Karcist Viekudh”

There is a child by the stream with mud in her mouth.

This is new. 

Something about the scene—its newness, or perhaps the surprise—brings you back to the present, to the sun-dappled clearing that you stand in now.

It occurs to you that you do not remember how long you have spent in this forest. There is a sea to the north whose dark waters you have peered into many times, wondering how it would feel to wash out with the tide, just once. But your feet carry you back inland, and you lose track of the time, time and time again.

In the garb of a beggar you have wandered this peninsula for years, and supped on naught but regret for most of them. Few have approached you; fewer still entertained. Nor have you expected it. What Ion’s war started has yet to stop: the kingdom of the Hittites has started to waver before the Phrygians, and the Assyrians from the south. Unrest begets distrust. So they name you a leper and shutter their doors to you, steer their children away from you on the streets: you who wrap yourself in bandages from head to foot, who will not speak even to ask _water, master, please_. 

You’ve learned to appreciate their avoidance. In some ways it is like the life that you remember dimly, from all those centuries ago, those hundreds of years that seem to have sieved away like silt. (As though the entirety of that self had not been reborn in the span of this time; as though you had not been bloodied, nor known the pelagic depths of devotion.) 

But it is not all alike. The pain of the flesh has dulled to near-nothing: a perfect match for the emptiness that lives inside you now. 

There was a time, towards the beginning, when you longed for this sense of congruency. When you wished that they would hack you apart, strip sinew from bone and grind what was left to dust, just to complement the ugly screaming thing that clung hook-fingered to your insides. When disbelief had transmuted to a silent, tearing rage directed at yourself, then at him, then at the others for the same reasons as you and the bronze ones for their shortsightedness and the Demiurge in all its flailing cruelty, for merely existing.

Now that all has crystallized, your innards hoarfrost-grey and numb of feeling, you think you would even settle for that old rage.

***

The child is still sitting there, scooping up handfuls of silt from the edge of the water. For such a small stream, the water flows fast. She could fall in. You ought to do something. 

Warn her? No. Surely children do not respond well to telepathic communications. 

Or—perhaps it is not too late—you could learn to leave well enough alone. A little mud is hardly lethal; the sight of you, even thus ensconced, must be liable to cause fear. And her parents could be on their way.

You start to turn away. 

And then—

Ion is, if not dead, then no less lost to you. Doomed to dance eternal with the Demiurge on some distant plane. You know this. You have known almost nothing but this, for the last few decades that you’ve wandered.

The knowledge does not stop you from seeing him here, smiling at something only he could say. 

This Ion has yet to reach the height of his power, dressed not in his wargear or fleshly finery, but with a certain lifelike brightness that lingers behind the eyes. He steps smoothly from behind a tree, casually crossing into existence from the emptiness on the other side.

(When he speaks it sounds no different from before. Like something from a living throat, though no vibrations stir the air—which is how you conclude that this is not only a ghost, but _your_ ghost, for your eyes and ears and mind alone. Briefly, you wonder if you can still go mad. Or if you already have.)

_Nadox_ , says your ghost with a sigh. For something unreal, he is very good at sounding tired. _What have you done with that tender heart of yours?_

_Nothing_ , is your reply. (Mere playacting; your telepathy reaches nothing.) _If my heart has changed at all, my lord, it is only by dilution._

This is the truth. Since your ascension you’d carried three inside of you, each a pump for blood black as midnight, with the potential to produce more if necessary. 

_You should know this_ , you add. And regret it _._ Even with a ghost of your own, you cannot bring yourself to be gently chiding, and the flatness of your tone betrays something of the wound that never closed.

_Yes. As I remember how you would urge me in council. To spare the powerless._ He looks away from you, up into the blue patches visible beyond the leaves. _What difference is there, between saving and sparing? Life is life._

And then you see. Under the tree that he stepped from behind, half-hidden among the grass, a bloom of red seeps into the water. 

Moving closer, you find the source:

A woman, lying still on the ground, her eyes flung wide. Four arrows sprout from her back, like feathered quills. Several bags had been strapped to her shoulders. Food, perhaps. Supplies for the road. Heavy enough to be for more than one. 

_All that life is_ , continues your ghost, _is the chance to make it your own. No matter who bequeathed it. Did we not agree on that, at least?_

Your eyes flicker to the corpse, then back to his. Even in a construct of your mind, they carry the darkling sheen of riverbed pebbles, smooth and dull, worn down by eons of water. And now, oddly beseeching. 

_Surely it is enough for one of us to have lost ourselves._

On that note, the mirage fades without ceremony—leaving only yourself, the gurgling of the stream, and the child looking over.

***

You bring the child away from the stream, away from her mother’s corpse, wiping the mud from her mouth as best you can. 

If she has not yet started to cry from fear or hunger, then she could not have been here for long. Possibly the girl did not even notice what happened to her mother. Possibly she thought that she merely laid down to take a rest.

She looks slightly dazed, but soon becomes fixated—to a concerning degree—on the way your bandages wave and flutter in the breeze, like ribbons. You have to stop her from reaching for them. These wrappings have been steeped in grisly portents for far too long, and go unchanged besides. Playing with them could not be to the benefit of any child. 

The girl is perhaps only five years old. You could take her to the nearest village, see if anyone will take her. But if they were fleeing invasion… it could still be for naught. _Was it the Phrygians?_ _The Lydians?_

It matters not. To find out anything, you would have to try asking. 

After some deliberation, you decide to project a message—not directed at her mind, but vague and generalized, so that anyone in a small radius would be able to hear. It should sound almost like ordinary speech. That should not frighten her too much.

“ _What is your name, little one?_ ” The child glances around, turning her head deliberately as if for the source of the voice, before her eyes land on you again. But she neither says nor thinks anything back. You try again. “ _Where do you come from?”_

Still no response. In your moment of distraction, she’s grabbed at a strip of bandage, still with that vaguely bleary look in her eyes. You quickly set her down on the ground. 

Instantly, she peers up at you with those too-solemn eyes. You sigh. 

_“I suppose you’ll need one, just for now.”_ You are really no good at such things. _“Let’s see. Would ‘Viekudh’ do?”_

(Meaningless to ask, perhaps, if she refuses to speak. Or cannot. But you think it worth trying.)

_Viekudh._ The word had leapt to mind, though you could scarcely fathom why. In the language of your long-ago homeland, where the floodplains of the Sindhu met the skyward-jutting mountains to the west, it had meant something close to _vacant_. 

Though even that could be auspicious, in these times of endless war. _Let us pray, little one, that you shall find your home again, vacant and free of occupiers._

“ _Viekudh, then,_ ” you venture cautiously. _“Until you are ready to tell me another. I am called Nadox.”_

You pick her up again, careful to rearrange the loose ends of your bandages so they fall out of reach. It is suddenly, appallingly clear that you don’t know the first thing about keeping a child alive. But finding somewhere to stay seems like as good a start as any. 

***

After Viekudh finally manages to fall asleep that night, you bury the woman in the clearing, among the roots of the long-lived trees in that forest. Life from life. Silently, you recite a few lines from the _Valkzaron_ ; though the last feels somewhat tinny as it rings through your mind. 

_May your body nourish those yet to come, even if your soul should fall prey to the Demiurge. And know that you shall be freed at the hour of our Prophet’s triumph._

Then, you consider your options.

Anatolia seems inhospitable at the moment. Precisely the reason that you had chosen it for your self-imposed exile: there are no Nälkän settlements that you know of. Would Europe be better? The diaspora might be stronger there; with the Dacians, and others of the empire who had dispersed. Perhaps you could even find some enclave to take her in. 

Going west would be inadvisable. If Anatolia seems chaotic now, then the Mediterranean is at the epicenter of slow collapse. And you doubt your ability to cross the Bosphorus. Even if you were to change yourself into a shape more suited to floating—Viekudh could still pitch off into the water, and succumb to cold. 

You decide, at last, to head east along the coastline, and from there into the north.

...assuming that the child herself agrees.

***

The next morning, you try talking to the girl once more, stooping down until you are as close to eye-level with her that you will be for the near future. To appear less looming, you’ve tucked away most of the arms, and opened only two of the eyes attached to your head.

“ _Your mother is gone, little one. Do you understand?”_

She actually nods, this time. You hope that counts as progress. Though in the light of day she’s begun to eye your bandages with more apprehension than curiosity. 

“ _Do you have anyone else?”_

Viekudh shakes her head, slowly. Not looking at you. 

“ _I can take you to some people further north. They could take care of you, at least until you are old enough to find your home again. But the journey will be long.”_ You pause, giving her some time to process this. _“Is that acceptable?”_

Her sole response is to walk over to the stream you had found her by. Several minutes pass as she looks around; first at the place where her mother had fallen, then in the direction they had presumably come from. Then, she only stares into the stream, as though divining something inscrutable. 

Finally, she returns to you, nodding slightly. Her eyes are faintly red.

Wordlessly, you let her take your hand, and the two of you begin to walk.

***

On your way out of the peninsula, you are forced to relearn the limitations of mortal flesh. You have had little need for sustenance, yourself, besides the occasional intake of organic material, and even then you aren’t picky. But Viekudh needs to _eat_. 

(It reminds you of another northward trek. You were alone and shivering, then; had dreamt in vivid red of a city rising from the always-cold, its spires warm and breathing and _alive_. Dreamt of a man whose outstretched hands were anointed with a promise sweet as sunrise, and terrible as the Truth. Of the balm of his touch, which wiped away the pain together with your ruined skin and made it all anew. 

But you had been as frail and mortal, then, as she is now. That, at least, is something you can never deny.)

It is not difficult for you to detect such creatures as deer and dormice in the underbrush, looking with hidden eyes for the trails and passages they have made, the flash of a tail into the foliage. Even slaying them poses little challenge. The difficulty is in keeping Viekudh away from the bodies until you’ve skinned and carved them for the fire. On such occasions you remind yourself that not all are as accustomed to such sights as you; that it might remind her of her mother, laid out silent and bloody by the riverbank, or untold scores of others before that.

There is another thing you must remember: ordinary humans cannot survive on meat alone. Especially if it is lean, and cooked. While you possess the capability to conjure fat from muscle, Viekudh refuses to eat raw meat, and makes faces when presented with offal. Nor does she have your immunity to the diseases it could carry. 

Which means you must turn to foraging, recalling what you can from texts you’ve encountered. There had been tomes on herb lore and pharmacognosy at Adytum’s library, and you had read them out of commitment to the principle that all literature had its value, but they never seemed the most relevant to your affairs. Now, you wish that you had learnt from them better. 

When what you find through this is insufficient, you decide to venture from the Colchian forests. Certain features—or lack thereof—help with this, so again you stash away the hands and eyes and some of the bandages; smooth over the most obvious scars for a time. 

It won’t last. Your body itself has become a mythos, and without conscious effort the thaumaturgy will always return to that. 

Townsfolk still give you strange looks: the cloaked beggar with the somber little girl, asking for anything that can be spared from their stores (usually grain or tubers, sometimes vegetables) in a voice that seems to echo if one listens too closely. And you cannot do this often, for fear of attracting attention. 

But some do take pity, in the end, and Viekudh receives the necessary nutrients for another day.

***

Her first word to you is _story_. 

She says it one night as you settle down for camp, somewhere directly east of the sea. You are seated by the fire; her, snug in a lump of bedding you had created from the skins of several animals. (You had melded them together when they were already dead—it won’t last as long as the alternative, but you hadn’t wanted to imagine her reaction to a living bed.)

Of course, you’ve been telling stories anyway. Otherwise, Viekudh cannot sleep on most nights; will lie awake and do nothing but stare upward for hours. You end up drawing most of them from folklore gleaned in your travels, and—when those grow stale—the half-remembered legends of your own childhood. ( _Oh, but that was ancient._ ) On the outskirts of an empire, under skies so achingly blue it seemed that the Sindhu itself had been dyed with it, the parents of your parents had dared to recall a time before the Daeva. 

(You’d had no reason to think of such things for quite some time.)

In the end, you find yourself strangely reluctant to touch on Nälkän lore, even simplified. 

Ion would have chided you. Part of you want to chide yourself. After all, it was not for nothing that you had committed the _Valkzaron_ to memory; as was it folly to conceal what you knew to be the truth of this universe and all others. But for a child who seems already hollowed-out by death… 

_Another day_ , you tell yourself, every night. _And if not from you, she will learn when she joins the others._

It is true that you are weary, that night. But you wouldn’t have forgotten the story. 

Nevertheless, her utterance takes you aback, additional eyes blinking open in surprise. They used to unnerve her—they, and the arms—so you had taken care to cover them with cloak or bandage when the effort of subsuming became too tiring. Though lately she seems to no longer cringe at the sight.

_“You can speak._ ”

(And of course she must have questions. Must have noticed that you look quite different from everyone else, up close; that your speech, when _truly_ listened to, is nothing like any sound she’s heard. But she’s never spoken until now, and the prospect of being asked fills you with sudden apprehension.)

“Yes,” Viekudh says, in the typical Neshite of the Hittites, slightly stilted. She blinks at you, unfazed. “Tell a story?”

The worry abates. You feel yourself smiling, though you know it will be hidden by the bandages. 

_“I always do._ ”

***

This goes on for several weeks as you travel up, following the sea’s eastern coast until you near the Caucasus. On another night, however, there is a change. 

“Not like the other ones. A _real_ story, this time,” Viekudh insists, furrowing her brow as though in deep rumination. “Like… one about you.”

You sigh. There are a thousand and one ways that this could go badly, but you are tired, and surely there must be a way to approach the truth that won’t harm her. 

“... _Very well.”_ You let your eyes flicker up for a moment, towards the stars. _“Once, there was a man who lived in a place far away._ _He was very sad, for the rulers of the land were petty and cruel. And they built their empire on the labor of the very people they had shackled.”_

_So they did_ , comes a voice, from beyond the campfire.

You look up, and there he is. This time in full regalia: robes blue-veined and sinew-spun, marbled with fat, gleaming like opals in the firelight. There is something quietly ironic about his smile. _Who is this meant to be about, exactly?_

_You, of course._ You divert these thoughts into a channel apart from the general. _It has to start with you. Now let me tell the story._

“What are you looking at?” Viekudh pipes up. 

“ _Nothing. Just… thinking. About the story._ ” You give her an apologetic look. “ _So—the man. He had been a slave of this land, and, like the rest, was raised in fear of the foul magics wielded by its rulers. But something more than fear lived on in his heart. For he knew that so long as he had the will for it, and the hope, something could always be done.”_

Ion leans forward. _Dear Nadox, are you sure this is accurate?_

_Please don’t interrupt._

Viekudh is looking at you expectantly, so you clear your throat.

_“As I was saying. One day the man chanced upon a place that held many old and terrible secrets. Terrible, I say, for in the hands of our unkind god—”_

“God?” Viekudh cuts in. “Father used to say that there were different gods. One for the rain, and one for the trees, and… a lot more.”

“ _Well,_ ” you begin carefully. “ _Perhaps there are. But the one that created all of them, and all of us, is not nearly so helpful. In fact, it is very wicked. Not because it_ wants _to hurt us, but because it doesn’t care if it does—as long as it has enough to eat for itself. Do you understand?”_

You aim Viekudh with a serious gaze. Her eyes are wide. 

With a sigh, you scoot over, patting her gently on the head. “ _Sometimes it is right to be afraid. But you don’t have to be, at the moment, because we have something that this god doesn’t. All people do. Can you guess what that is?”_

She contemplates this for a few seconds. “A real body?” 

You give her a look of faint amazement. 

“ _That’s… a very good guess, actually. You are correct that this god is not made manifest in our world. So you have little to fear from that._ ” At the sound of this, she seems a little relieved. Though she still pulls the blankets close. 

You continue. “ _But the thing that we have—what only we can do—is to help each other. To live on, not only for ourselves, but for others. Because we know that they are struggling right along with us, in this unkind world. And that is something this god will never grasp.”_

Viekudh looks deep in thought. You try to smile reassuringly—before you remember the bandages. _"Still want to hear the story?_ ”

“Yes,” she says, resolute. 

There is something of Saarn in the hardness of her eye, just then, and it rattles loose in your chest like the memory of those early nights on the trail of war, everyone clustered at whatever campsite could be raised and lowered in the span of a day. 

The reality of it had been grim. Limbs torn and mended and torn again. Counting the fallen every night, with no time left to mourn. 

But your mind flits, mothlike, towards only the light and warmth. Amidst a small crowd of onlookers: Orok, in heated debate with Tundas over the best way to scatter a Daevite vanguard; only to be cut off by a wry suggestion from Lovataar herself. A look of annoyance from Saarn, as she tried to teach her snakes to synchronize their movements, as though directing a troupe of dancers. Otrava approaching you, almost hesitant, with questions on some obscure metaphysical theorem scribed in a leathern journal. 

And at the heart of it, him: striding through the encampment, stopping to converse with any among his forces. But most of all—those who found themselves estranged or uneasy, distant from the commotion. This alone might have swelled and burst your hearts with feeling. Even if it meant he could not talk to you as often as before. Even if, when you did speak, it had to be as Klavigar to Ozi̮rmok, not one friend to another. 

None of it mattered, you’d thought, because this was what proved so conclusively that he was _different_. And that he cared enough to remain that way.

You turn back towards the fire. “ _Well, I shall have to make it quick. It’s getting late. Where was I…?”_

_For in the hands of our unkind god..._ prompts the Ion that sits on the other side of the fire, close enough to the rim that flames send shadows dancing across his face. You give a nod. If you appear at all ungrateful, then it is merely for the ridiculousness of being reminded by a projection of your own mind. Nothing else.

“ _For in the hands of our unkind god, who used these powers unknowingly, they had shaped all life in creation. But the man felt that the true measure of a tool was in its ends. So he won this power at great cost to himself, and used it to liberate his fellow slaves, and many others in the empire besides.”_

“Was there a war?” Viekudh asks, clutching her blankets. Most likely thinking of what she and her mother had fled from. Not for the first time, you wonder what horrors she had truly witnessed. A father gutted? Brothers and sisters, rode down by the invading cavalry? A village razed to the ground? And all of it was common, so common. Unspeakably, grotesquely common: a lifelong misery of smoke and iron and choking tears. You had thought Ion’s _Ikunaan_ an escape, the only chance left for this world, and then even that was torn from you.

“ _Yes, there was,”_ you reply, the thought little more than a whisper. _“And not a pleasant one. Though its accomplishments were admirable, know this: in war, tragedy rarely cuts cleanly._ ” 

From the other side of the fire, Ion eyes you askance. _Really, Nadox. Speaking on behalf of the Daevites?_

_As if I would. It was not only they that we conquered._ His unreality, suddenly glaring, makes you reckless. _And had this girl’s family been swept up in our halkosts, would we have spared a second thought?_

_If you’d known, you would._ His voice is terribly soft. _That was why I needed you._ _To stop me from becoming monstrous, even when I could not stop myself._

You shut all your eyes and force the static from your mind, until all you hear is Viekudh’s voice from behind you.

“How did you meet the man?”

_“He saved me. As he did many others.”_ If you could see your smile, you suppose it would be bittersweet. _“He was a great hero, this man. Bold and cunning, but gentle, too, where it was needed. And caring most of all. He felt deeply for all on this earth who had been trodden into the dirt as he had, and so he never stopped fighting, for what he thought would bring an end to their misery. I only thought that I could teach him to be wise.”_

When you turn to look at Viekudh, her eyes are wide and shining, rapt with interest. “Did it work? The teaching?”

_“Some of it, yes.”_ When you glance upward, the stars give you an approximation of the time. _“It is growing late. Let’s continue this story tomorrow.”_

Viekudh grumbles, but in a few moments is laying down, breath slowing gradually.

You are just settling into your nightly meditations when she speaks up again, sounding drowsy:

“Nadox?”

_"Yes?"_

"Did you love the man? A lot?"

_"_ _…Yes,”_ you answer quietly, after a long pause. _“I suppose that I did.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tundas is from [SCP-2095](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2095) by Metaphysician, and Otrava is from [SCP-4140](http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-4140) by Hatcheye.
> 
> The translation for "Viekudh" comes from Google Translate, which says that it seems like a possible transliteration of the Hindi for "vacant." However, I'm aware that the actual Bronze-Age language in the region around the Indus River and Hindu Kush mountains was probably quite different from modern Hindi, and won't necessarily have an equivalent. So if anyone knows more about this, feel free to correct me, and I'll think of an alternate explanation for her name.


	2. Unfortunate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude without respite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for gore, mention of past self-harm, and referenced child death.

_Slowly, they become perceptible._

_Stimuli. Fading in from dull to clear and ringing. Too clear, overpowering. Disorienting._

_Shouts that strain to be heard above the din: desperate, commanding, pained. The clang of metal on bone. The thundering of heavier things in the distance._

_Whiplash of lightning, too close to the ground. Taste of ozone on the air._

_Flashes of chaos around you, distorted._

_This is—_

_Not real. You are not here; nor have you ever been. (Though perhaps you ought to have.) You tell yourself these things in turn, yet the ground beneath your feet feels more than real as it trembles, each sound paring through you as a swimmer parts the water._

_All of a sudden you see him, battling a figure whose outline shines even as the clouds above gather low and heavy; though they block out the sun. See how he matches them step for step, staff upraised, fonts of flesh rising up to meet the stranger’s hammer._

_See how he slips and falters, just for a second. Misses a parry. Close-combat has never been his preference; he has so rarely needed it—and the hammer catches him under the chin, knocks back his head at an angle. When he lifts it again the blood trickles slowly from his mouth._

_Strange how the look on his face is clear to you from here. At the surface it is all determination, focus sharpened to a fine point, absent aught else. But you know better._

_There—in the creases around his eyes, the way his mouth draws back into a thin, bleak line—are the faint underpinnings of resignation._

_You have seen this expression when he passed through cities after a successful siege, when his eyes fell on those who had starved after months or years behind high walls; or survived, only to be caught in the frenzy of battle. Toothless grandfathers and scampering urchins, a one-eyed midwife who died cradling a child she just delivered. Those nights he would not speak to you; would sit somewhere and stare at anything with faraway eyes. And you, helpless, could only try to remind him of that new-dawned world that would make all this suffering worth something, in the end._

_No, you want to say. Let them have this victory. Are you not the lord of life? Then live. Live another day. Live, and stay yourself._ _Let us go back and I will ransack Adytum’s library, all libraries, to find a cure for you._ _Say the word, and_ _I shall traverse the cosmic planes for ten thousand years, and look upon their innermost citadels and their loneliest wild places, and commit to memory the byzantine sidestreets of their very busiest cities. I shall learn the true names of each and every one of their masters, and dare them to forbid me entry._

_I shall overturn every crevice in all dimensions named and nameless for the secret that would bring you back._ _And if even that should fail, I shall pluck out each of my hearts and offer them to the Demiurge one by one, still-beating. I would offer up the sum of me for fuel, if that is what it would take. But do not make me—_

_Do not—_

_Ion—_

_(_ _Too late, oh far too late, and it sounds like your sister, though she had been long dead by then._ _Poor little brother, too late by centuries._

_After your parents had gone, Lakṣmī_ _suffered the heights of your mad hopes with little more than a sardonic smile, ever the prudent one. In the days after you were marked she took you in, against her husband’s protests. She wouldn’t hear it. Wouldn’t let him touch you, even to make a scratch. You had carved bloody lines up and down your arms before she snapped at you to stop it, no one saw, we were careful enough._

_In the morning they dragged out the family, all four of them, and killed them._

_You wonder if she hadn’t been right about you, after all.)_

_The next time he draws on the flesh, it_

_bursts_

_from his chest like a cataract, an overgrown heart or perhaps only what has remained of it after all this time, twisted into the shape of the nightmare to come, glutted on his power and feeding—_

_And suddenly he is in front of you._

_Somehow, impossibly (but you could believe it of him) he has forced it back under the skin for the moment. You can see it roiling there, restless and implacable, swelling by the second. He’s shaking with the effort of holding it down: the veins in his eyes have burst and now red rivulets run down his cheeks (and ears and nose and mouth), lips stretching up to meet them. The rictus of the thing creeping outward. His presence in your mind is a litany of end-it-end-it-end-it-now, slowly blotted out by the Archon’s song._

_It is tempting to give yourself to it, too. All of you consumed at once. Better than a life in the wake of this._

_Then he is holding the staff out to you, the point of it pressed against his chest._

~~_the prophet’s most_ ~~

~~_you were the first of my_ ~~

_should the time come you will know where_

_should the time_

_where to_

_(is this what trust is)_

_You take the staff._

_You—_

_(no)_

_He makes a tiny noise of relief as it slides in, faint against the crunch of bone, and it rips into you before the Archon’s teeth, carves you open and bares the insides raw and bleeding towards the sky._

_When the thing rises out of his body (broken, all the limbs bent wrong, looking smaller than you ever remembered) you fall to your knees and care not as it swallows you and everything else for miles around._

* * *

“Nadox. Nadox!” 

Someone is shaking you. Viekudh.

You blink, and then force yourself to blink, hard. With all your eyes. The morning sun seems almost blinding.

Your meditations. 

You must have fallen asleep. Nowadays when you dream, it is almost always of such things, so you contrive not to put yourself in that position. But yesterday you were weary and the story had filled your thoughts with—

(These dreams are unlike the ones from your earlier journey north. There is nothing rosy to them; they have the stagnant quality of congealed blood, of scabbed-over wounds opening and resealing, and reopening.)

It takes an inordinately long time to grasp your telepathy again. _“I’m sorry. Was I…”_

“...think it was a bad dream,” she says, her face coming into focus, pale and drawn. Worried. “You were calling for someone. In your head. I could hear it in my head.”

When this registers, an ice-floe chill drifts across the surface of your mind. If your dreams could influence hers, and without your knowledge, would her waking thoughts would be safe?

_“That is—you shouldn't have had to hear that.”_ You rise to your feet. _“I’m very sorry. If this ever happens again, please wake me right away.”_

“But I did! I only heard it a few seconds ago.” 

_“I see. And did you dream about anything… out of the ordinary, before that?”_

She hums thoughtfully. “Well, a giant bird was carrying me on its back.”

The tension goes out of you, a little. It seems unlikely that the entire dream had manifested in hers. 

_“Oh? What kind of bird?”_

“It was made out of fire,” she says, beaming, almost proud. “But it didn’t burn _me_.”

_“That is quite unusual.”_ You nod in sympathy. _“Let us be off, then. Perhaps we will even find such a bird on our way north.”_

You try to make your tone jovial, add some chime to the mind-echo of your voice. If it works you would not be able to tell. Viekudh is an uncanny judge of character. Occasionally she will even point you towards people in a village: those who seem “nice,” with relaxed faces or a spring in their step, who might be willing to spare the odd root-vegetable. 

She is more often right than not. So when she smiles back at you, it may well be for your sake. 

You accept it anyway.


End file.
